[untitled] Michigan Law Review, (1906-03-01), pages 409-410

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RECENT LEGAL LITERATURE

Hints for Forensic Practice. A Monograph on Certain Rules appertaining
to the Subject of Judicial Proof. By Theodore F. C. Demarest, A.B.,
A.M., L.L.B., New York: The Banks Law Publishing Company,
1905, pp. x, 123.

The author of this little monograph has very successfully attempted an
exposition of the legal principles underlying the decisions of the courts upon
the use of the objections to evidence as "incompetent, irrelevant and imma-
terial," and of those principles which should control in determining whether
evidence once received shall be considered though not objected to when
received.

The frequent use of the objection that evidence is "incompetent, irrele-
vant and immaterial," or that it is subject to one or more of these objections,
has not escaped the attention of any one with much experience in the trial
court. And yet there have been few indeed who have had any very definite
idea of what the objection really was in legal effect.

The author has certainly accomplished a real service in pointing out quite
clearly that the objection "incompetent," upon both principle and authority,
means nothing more than would be meant by a general objection that the
evidence is inadmissible; and in showing just what is the legal signification
and effect of an objection to evidence as "irrelevant" or as "immaterial," and
that the use of both is tautology.

He is not less helpful in his discussion of the position of that party to
litigation who has permitted the reception of evidence without objection,
when it was apparent at the time it was offered that it was subject to objec-
tion. The author's caustic comment upon the attempt to distinguish between
a motion to strike out and one for instruction to disregard is well deserved.

The book can be read at a single sitting, and while printed in large type
on good paper and being well bound in cloth it is inexpensive, and the trial
lawyer can ill afford to pass it by without reading. V. H. Lane.

An Essay on the Principles of Circumstantial Evidence, Illustrated by

Numerous Cases. By William Wills, Esq., Fifth Edition by Sir

Alfred Wills, Knt. Wills' American Notes, by George E. Beers and

Arthur L. Corbin, of the Faculty of the Yale Law School, Boston:

The Boston Book Company, 1905, pp. xiii, 448.

The first edition of this work was published in England in 1838, and its

value is attested in the demand which brought out the fifth English edition

in 1902, which was put out under the editorship of Sir Alfred Wills, Knt.,

one of England's judges of the High Court of Justice and son of William

Wilis, Esq., the author. The present American edition is the first authorized

edition published in this country, though Judge Wills makes some very

caustic comments in the preface to the last English edition in criticism of

410 MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW

the wholesale appropriation by one Arthur P. Will of the matter of the
edition of 1862 for a Treatise on the Law of Circumstantial Evidence, pub-
lished in Philadelphia in 1896. This appropriation furnishes an occasion for
some rather severe criticism of our copyright laws which make possible such
depredation.

The present edition is a reprint of the text of the last English edition
with American notes by Professors Beers and Corbin.

The text is limited in its discussion to circumstantial evidence as applic-
able to issues in criminal cases, and the plan of treatment is to present a
statement of the rules controlling some special phase of circumstantial evi-
dence, developed through a brief discussion of the particular matter, and to
illustrate with typical cases.

This treatment of a particular phase is followed immediately with the
"American Notes." Their chapters deal with other divisions of the subject
and are likewise followed by the discussion of the American editors.

In the wealth of new material at the lawyer's hand in this general field of
the law of evidence this little! book is not to be overlooked, particularly by
those interested in the administration of the criminal law.

The work is scholarly and the selection of cases most excellent. Mr.
Beers through his special work in the field of evidence is well qualified for its
editorship, and the profession will find the book what it purports to be — a
convenient and accurate exposition upon principle and authority of this inter-
esting branch of the law. V. H. Lane.

Procedure ; Its Theory and Practice. By William T. Hughes, LL.B., author
of Technology of Law and of the Law of Contracts, Chicago: Cal-
laghan & Co., 1905. Two volumes, pp. x, 1289.

A work like this one, evidently undertaken and written with a conscien-
tious ambition to classify and co-ordinate the myriad phases of modern law,
and unquestionably showing a vast amount of labor and research, should not
be carelessly criticised by a hasty reviewer. The author, in his preface,
appeals to the obvious difficulties met with in its preparation, as considera-
tions sufficient to protect it against a hurried and harsh criticism. A reviewer
can seldom do an author full justice. But since reviews must be written, the
writers of them may at least try to bear in mind that it is easier to find
defects in a book than to write a better one.

However, after every allowance is made, this treatise, we are obliged to
confess, is somewhat puzzling. It is built upon the very excellent basic
theorem, that, inasmuch as procedure runs through all the substantive
branches, it may be considered the unifying principle upon which a well
co-ordinated system of law can be constructed. This, it seems to us, is
sound doctrine. Procedure is thoroughly fundamental. About it as an axis,
the substantive titles revolve. Ignorance of procedure is ignorance of the
law. No man can be a sound and safe lawyer who has not made procedure
the touchstone of his legal studies.

To reconstruct the body of the law upon this principle seems to us a most